"The stage's all set for you—now we're just waiting on you to make your move..."
After receiving word from Kaori Itadori that everything was ready, Mahiru felt reassured, her mood lightening a little, and she decided to take a stroll around the Jujutsu High campus.
It was nine at night now.
The dormitory Jujutsu High had assigned Mahiru turned out, unexpectedly, to be the very same room she'd lived in before, back when she was 'Miwa Ran.'
So it was that Mahiru found herself frozen in place in front of the sports field.
Because there was Riko Amanai, running laps around the track.
"...This girl..."
Was she being serious right now?
Mahiru certainly hadn't ordered Riko to train out here.
The girl's actions were clearly her own initiative.
Mahiru had deliberately made the training regimen brutally intense, hoping to burn through Riko's fleeting enthusiasm as fast as possible—but reality, it seemed, hadn't gone quite the way she'd planned.
The field had no lights; only moonlight drifted down over it.
The girl ran on, gasping in great heaving breaths, drenched in sweat, her steps growing unsteady with exhaustion. But in the moonlight, her eyes burned bright, and her expression stayed fiercely resolute.
Honestly...
Mahiru let out a low sigh.
She walked over to the edge of the track and reached out to stop Riko.
The running girl spotted Mahiru and blinked in surprise. "Jogo... Teacher? What are you—"
"I believe I told you," Mahiru said, her expression a touch exasperated, "to go rest."
"Um, yes, but, I..." Riko stammered, guilt written across her face. "I'm not tired."
"So because you're not tired, that means it's fine to ignore what I told you?"
"No! I just—" The girl hesitated for a few seconds, then gritted her teeth, lowered her head, and quietly admitted the truth. "I'm... I'm just so useless..."
"Hm?"
"I'm scared that if I keep going like this, I still won't get any stronger..." The girl hung her head. "So I just..."
So the anxiety had driven her out here to keep training, had it?
Mahiru turned and beckoned to her. "Come on."
Riko blinked, dazed. "..."
"I'll treat you to a midnight snack."
"Huh? A midnight snack?"
An invitation from her teacher was hard to turn down—especially since this teacher happened to be the only person alive who could help her grow stronger right now.
In truth it wasn't much of a midnight snack, just some odds and ends of candy and pastries.
Riko followed Mahiru back to her quarters. Mahiru laid out the snacks to welcome her, but the moment Riko stepped into the room, her surprise gave way to a visible dip in mood.
"What's wrong?" Mahiru asked, puzzled.
"It's nothing... it's just—" Riko glanced around the room, her eyes downcast. "This room used to belong to someone who mattered a great deal to me."
She had to mean Miwa Ran.
Mahiru bit back the urge to roll her eyes and, feigning ignorance, kept her tone even. "Is that so? Then why did they give it to me?"
"Because... rooms are meant to be lived in, I guess..." Riko clenched her fists.
She realized a knot of negative feeling was welling up inside her.
The room of someone she cherished had been handed off to a stranger, and worse, she found herself taking that resentment out on the Mahiru standing in front of her—even though her own rational mind told her it made no sense.
Mahiru blinked. She honestly didn't care in the slightest what negative feelings Riko might be having.
Still, an amusing thought occurred to her—when she'd moved into this room under the identity of 'Jogo,' it had been spotless, every piece of furniture arranged exactly as it had been when 'Miwa Ran' lived here.
Riko must have been the one keeping the room clean, preserving it just as it had always looked.
"Oh? So that's why you're upset?" Mahiru raised an eyebrow.
"...Sorry, Teacher. I'm just being childish." Riko bowed her head even lower. "You haven't actually done anything wrong..."
"Is that the same reason you're so desperate to grow stronger?"
"Yeah... When she fought a powerful enemy to protect me, there was nothing I could do. If it hadn't been for me, she never would have had to sacrifice herself."
"That really is a shame..."
Mahiru said it offhandedly, her tone light. But Riko's emotions suddenly flared up again, her voice rising. "Don't get the wrong idea, Teacher! She was strong! She was one of the greatest Jujutsu Sorcerers there ever was!"
"Oh? The greatest, huh?"
"Even stronger than you, Teacher! Much stronger!"
"Is that so..."
What a tactless thing to say.
"Well, in that case..." Mahiru smiled. "I suppose I'll have to get a little more serious."
Riko froze for a moment. Then she noticed something around them had changed.
The woods around Jujutsu High should have been alive with birdsong and cicadas. Now there was nothing—dead silence.
"Don't worry," Mahiru said. "It's just a simple Barrier."
With Tengen kidnapped, she needed to set up a Barrier here at Jujutsu High—as long as she was careful about it, no one would notice.
She'd originally planned to just humor Riko's request without giving it much thought. But seeing the girl so stubbornly determined, she found she couldn't bring herself to brush her off anymore.
Mahiru held out her hand. "Give me your hand."
Riko felt the shift in the air and tensed up. She had no idea what Mahiru intended, but she obediently held out her hand anyway.
Their hands met. Mahiru lowered her eyes, and Idle Transfiguration activated.
A tingling numbness shot from her fingertips through Riko's entire body, and the girl shuddered.
What a strange feeling, Riko couldn't help thinking.
Mahiru, eyes still lowered, spoke in an even tone. "What kind of Cursed Technique do you want?"
"...Huh?" The girl didn't process it. She thought she'd misheard.
"What kind of Cursed Technique do you want?" Mahiru repeated. "Whatever it is, I can give it to you. But as the price, from now on, you'll need to keep this a secret for me."
A Star Plasma Vessel had real talent for becoming a Jujutsu Sorcerer—Yuki Tsukumo was proof enough of that, a Special Grade Sorcerer in her own right. Riko had no innate Cursed Technique, but her body was naturally receptive to Cursed Energy. If Mahiru properly inscribed a technique into her, at the very least it would guarantee Riko could reach Grade 1 Sorcerer level someday.
"I heard Miwa Ran's Cursed Technique was Contractual Re-Creation, right?" Mahiru said, smiling brightly. "If you want something along those same lines, I can manage that too, you know."
Riko's pupils trembled.
"Really...? You really mean it?"
The phantom Kenjaku wasn't in the best of moods.
He couldn't shake the feeling that he was being deliberately targeted.
He'd made a point of waiting until Mahiru returned to 'the present world' before making his move on 'the past world'—and yet somehow he'd run into her there anyway.
"So I need your help," the phantom Kenjaku said with a smile, addressing the tall man standing before him. "You did promise you'd help unconditionally, didn't you?"
There were three worlds in play now. The future world was one hundred percent under their control, while in the past world, Mahiru held ninety percent of it. With the two sides locked in a grinding stalemate over the present world, whoever managed to crack open a weakness first in the other side's fully-held territory would seize the advantage.
Even though the phantom Kenjaku figured his own odds of victory sat at a solid ninety percent, he was still itching to reclaim the past world.
Tengen had been kidnapped, so there was no way to occupy it?
By all normal logic, that should have been an unshakeable fact.
But no matter—they had Chaos and Harmony.
Even with Tengen kidnapped, they still had a chance to reclaim the past world.
Still, with Mahiru now also present in the past world, the phantom Kenjaku decided that achieving their goal called for bringing out some unconventional firepower.
"Now then, I have a task for you, Mr. Dabura," the phantom Kenjaku said with a smile. "Do remember—everything you're about to do is for your sister's sake, not for ours."
____
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